Gentry’s Story

Gentry came into the world completely blind. Born with congenital glaucoma and a protruding left cornea, Gentry had her first eye surgery when she was just two days old and received her first cornea transplant at one month to reconstruct her left eye and correct corneal cloudiness. While glaucoma is an eye disease commonly associated with the elderly, the reality is glaucoma affects people of all ages. Today at the age of four, she’s overcome more than 20 separate surgeries and five cornea transplants, including a prosthesis.

Gentry’s snowman artwork is featured on Saving Sight’s 2015 holiday card.

In spite of every obstacle she’s faced, Gentry is a happy pre-kindergartner, enjoying friends and her first year of school. That Gentry dances, plays, and reads just like other kids her age, is an achievement of modern medicine and her parents’ enduring support. As Gentry’s mother Becky put it, “It’s amazing where we started at compared to what Gentry’s able to do now.”

Though she had never encountered donation or transplantation before her daughter’s birth, Becky knows how important the the gift of sight is to people of all ages. Recently, her own family was directly impacted through the tragic death of a cousin, and because of Gentry’s experience, eye, organ, and tissue donation were important to the family’s legacy.

Our programs are preventing vision loss and changing the lives of many like Gentry, but we can’t achieve that mission without your support. This holiday season, please consider making a special, meaningful gift. By supporting Saving Sight, you help rescue thousands from the heartbreak of vision loss.

Read Gentry’s original story here.